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Tanisha Thomas plays with her son Kingston, 3, in one of the child care rooms following the grand opening ceremony of the new Riverside Campus of the Center for Transforming Lives in the Morningside neighborhood of Fort Worth on May 2. With the help of the organization, Thomas was able to find stability after experiencing homelessness and battling suicidal thoughts.
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In the first two weeks of the program, Center for Transforming Lives has distributed $45,000 to Tarrant County residents in need of emergency rental and utility assistance.
In August, Tarrant County Commissioners decided to outsource the assistance that the Human Services department had previously done because it was not being run efficiently. The Center for Transforming Lives subsequently won the $2.3 million contract to provide rental and utility assistance to residents beginning on Nov. 3.
Carol Klocek, CEO of the Center for Transforming Lives, said people were already lined up at 7:30 a.m. on Nov. 3 waiting to apply for the program. In four hours, the center received 170 applications without ever having advertised the program. Thirty of the county’s in-process applicants were also transferred over that day.
On Tuesday, Klocek said 23 households will receive the assistance they requested on Nov. 3. Once that is done, the portal will open back up for more applications to be submitted.
Klocek said the center has been charged with getting the allotted $2 million of aid to the community as quickly as possible, but she’s not sure how long the funds will last. The county gave a grant of $2.3 million to the center with only $300,000 of that going toward administrative costs. The remainder is designated for aid.
“Will that aid run out in six months? In seven months? And then, will there be a gap until the next year, or will there be, you know, additional funds?” Klocek said. “But what we want to do is stabilize as many households as we can and do that quickly, and that’s our primary charge.”
Commissioner Roderick Miles, who hosted the public town hall at the center, said if the money is spent before the year-long contract ends, that will give the commissioners a strong case to say more investment is necessary.
“How can you refute the evidence?” Miles said. “If we run through $2 million, then it’s incumbent upon us to say the need is greater than we anticipated, and we need to earmark, and we need to put more money into this program. It makes my colleagues and I reexamine how we’re doing our budget every year.”
Before the county opted to outsource the utility and rental assistance programs, Human Services was only giving out about $1.5 million in aid. Budget director Helen Giese said the $4.5 million budget wasn’t being maximized to help residents in need.
By spending over $2 million less of taxpayer money, the county is helping more members of the community through the partnership with Center for Transforming Lives.
Rand Otten, acting director of Human Services, said at the October commissioners court meeting that in one month, the county’s department helped about 30 to 40 individuals pay rent in emergencies and about 100 people who needed help paying for utilities.
According to the county staff report, Center for Transforming Lives proposed to assist approximately 2,200 households from Nov. 1 through Sept. 30, 2026.
There is a great amount of need and a severe shortage of affordable housing in Tarrant County, Klocek said.
“The problem is that for so many households, a flat tire, an illness, a gap in child care, all of those kinds of situations can cause people to destabilize,” Klocek said. “A lot of people are also having to take care of an older relative, and so maybe they have child care issues, but an older relative gets sick, so they have to take off work for that, and they work for an employer who doesn’t allow sick time, or doesn’t have flexibility. So all of those kinds of situations can mean they can’t make rent payments.”
Under the Center for Transforming Lives, residents will no longer be able to receive long-term utility assistance as they could under Human Services. They will be allowed to apply for aid once a year and receive up to three months of help.
“We’re really limiting this to an emergency assistance program,” Klocek said. “So with our goal of preventing homelessness and allowing people to really weather those things that come up, … but where people are going to be able to pay their rent.”
Residents in need will be able to get connected with the other resources the center offers and other organizations who can help through the process of applying for emergency assistance at the Center for Transforming Lives.
Miles said with the number of people ready to apply on Day 1, he saw that the center is a safe and trusted place for the community.
“People know where it is, and they’re here waiting because they know, once the door is open, they’ll get what they need,” Miles said. “So I feel really good about how we’ve started.”
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Rachel Royster
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